Number of malnourished children in Africa grows

ROME – Hunger and malnutrition kill nearly 6 million children a year, and more people are malnourished in sub-Saharan Africa this decade than in the 1990s, according to a UN report released on Tuesday.

Many of the children die from diseases that are treatable, including diarrhoea, pneumonia, malaria and measles, said the report by the Rome-based UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of malnourished people grew to 203,5 million people in 2000-02 from 170,4 million 10 years earlier, the report states, noting that hunger and malnutrition are among the main causes of poverty, illiteracy, disease and deaths in developing countries.The UN food agency said the goal of reducing the number of the world’s hungry by half by the year 2015, set by the World Food Summit in 1996 and reinforced by the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, remains distant but attainable.”If each of the developing regions continues to reduce hunger at the current pace, only South America and the Caribbean will reach the Millennium Development Goal target,” Jacques Diouf, the agency’s director-general, wrote in the report, the agency’s annual update on world hunger.The food agency said the Asia-Pacific region also has a good chance of reaching the targets “if it can accelerate progress slightly over the next few years.””Most, if not all of the …targets can be reached, but only if efforts are redoubled and refocused,” Diouf said.”To bring the number of hungry people down, priority must be given to rural areas and to agriculture as the mainstay of rural livelihoods.”US Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, on a visit to Rome to meet with FAO and Italian officials, said that free trade and economic growth were key to fighting hunger.- Nampa-APIn sub-Saharan Africa, the number of malnourished people grew to 203,5 million people in 2000-02 from 170,4 million 10 years earlier, the report states, noting that hunger and malnutrition are among the main causes of poverty, illiteracy, disease and deaths in developing countries.The UN food agency said the goal of reducing the number of the world’s hungry by half by the year 2015, set by the World Food Summit in 1996 and reinforced by the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, remains distant but attainable.”If each of the developing regions continues to reduce hunger at the current pace, only South America and the Caribbean will reach the Millennium Development Goal target,” Jacques Diouf, the agency’s director-general, wrote in the report, the agency’s annual update on world hunger.The food agency said the Asia-Pacific region also has a good chance of reaching the targets “if it can accelerate progress slightly over the next few years.””Most, if not all of the …targets can be reached, but only if efforts are redoubled and refocused,” Diouf said.”To bring the number of hungry people down, priority must be given to rural areas and to agriculture as the mainstay of rural livelihoods.”US Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, on a visit to Rome to meet with FAO and Italian officials, said that free trade and economic growth were key to fighting hunger.- Nampa-AP